WE WERE HYPHY

Let me tell you a story about a movement that almost was.

[ Tires squealing ] [ Singing ] All of the hyphy.

When you watch MTV or listen to some of the popular radio stations, you might be familiar with the term hyphy.

A variation of the word hypher, which describes the strident rhythm and carefree dance moves.

California hip hop with the gangsta rap and the low riders, we don't do that out here.

We ride in Buick LeSabres.

We ride in [inaudible].

Many agree Oakland sideshows are growing larger, more violent, and are scaring people.

Tell me about the whistles.

The whistles go whoo!

What you're watching is a dance phenomenon known as turfing, taking up room on the floor or, in this case, the street.

Hyphy is an energy.

Hyphy is a villain.

Hyphy is an impact grunge hat, blues, and any other genre of music that was totally taking over the nation.

From the music video channels to a recent front page of USA Today, all eyes are on local hip hop artists and their music following the monster hit songs Tell me When to Go.

[ Singing ] The song is getting major play on MTV.

It debuted at number 3 on Billboard's Top 200.

This is the first time the Bay Area sound has gotten national play in more than a decade.

You wouldn't believe what it took to get to this point.

Me, I'm Benjamin Earl Turner.

And I came of age during the peak of the hyphy movement.

You may have heard that word before.

Hyphy.

Maybe you heard it from this guy.

Maybe even this guy.

And you might really be a real one if you heard it from this dude.

The truth is the hyphy movement never reached the mainstream like we thought it would.

But, for us, Bay Area youth aka Bay [inaudible], it was everything.

Let's take it back to the very beginning.

It all started in this magical little place known as the Yay Area.

[ Singing ] If you think about it historically, it's been like a -- like a hub of counterculture?

You know, if you think about, you know, the Black Panthers, you think about the hippies, you know, free love in the '60s; when you think about, you know, even -- even, like, beat writers in Frisco to, you know, fast forward into the hyphy movement, you know, it's an unusual place.

But we celebrate our uniqueness and our, like, unusualness.

The Bay Area is an epicenter for social movements.

When you think about the Bay Area, you think about resistance.

The countercultural movements that come out of the Bay Area always kind of speak to this rebellion against dominant society.

So, in the '90s, if you will, and 2000s, these are the children of parents who were involved in the '60s movements and the '70s movements.

And so out of that comes this resistance.

[ Music ] The Bay Area's, like, screaming anywhere you go.

I could be in Texas and New York, and I find that one Bay Area, we just grown.

Now we tapped in, with each other the whole -- oh, man.

Ye was something that where we at.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You feel me?

It's just automatic.

You know what I'm saying?

We, the Bay Area, we find each other.

You could be anywhere, Vegas.

You could bang away [inaudible].

Let's get it.

All right.

Now we on.

Not see him again.

Now you just created this whole chain reaction.

Now you see him.

Now he with this crowd.

And everyone's looking at you.

That's some Bay Area.

We gonna cause -- we gonna cause the whole crowd to be like them.

Okay.

I want to join them [laughing].

That's that Bay.

That's that real Bay.

[ Music ] Slap.

It's our music.

Hyphy is a lot of different things.

But, at its core, its music, a sound and a speed.

The uniqueness of it makes you wonder where it came from.

You're going to learn today.

I think the people that shaped the sound of hyphy, honestly, I wouldn't pin it to one person.

I mean, there's so many influencers.

And, honestly, it goes back to the '80s.

If you really break it down, it goes back to those old school 808 tracks.

You can reference Too Short on a lot of that, you know, Freaky Tales and music like that.

Too Short was a huge influence on the Bay Area rap scene and just independent music in general.

Too Short is a pioneer of selling your tapes out the trunk of your car.

So my pops would call that mob music, right?

Baseline heavy, 808s.

And hyphy to me is uptempo mob music.

Mob music is heavy base line, synthesizers.

Kind of dark music, music made by street dudes.

And it was largely telling street stories.

And it was sometimes dark.

It was sometimes almost spiritual.

It was very cutthroat.

It was, you know, shoot 'em up, gang gang, you know, deep dark beats, stuff to ride and smoke to.

[ Music ] When I think of mob music, I think of the Jacka.

The Jacka was the voice for the streets, the community.

I've been there through video shoots and whatnot, so I'm aware of the impact that Jacka has with his fans.

The impact that the Jacka had on the Bay Area is that the Jacka was a person for the streets.

And he made a lot of music for people that were going through things.

And his music is soul music.

If you listen to it right now, you're still going to feel it.

When something's going on, whatever is born next is usually kind of the opposite.

The '90s was really about mob music, and through the early 2000s it was kind of like any -- you know, anybody do anything.

So you had kind of like a crossroads of sounds.

Well, I think we came off the gangster rap.

And then Rick Rock came along and stepped up the beat.

Ah.

Let's go.

and it's just -- I mean, ever since I was little, obviously, there's just something like pushing you towards the music.

As a general way of thinking to make beats, I might have a little -- I had more uptempo in me.

I came from Montgomery, Alabama.

And at that time, you know, they was doing a lot of Miami bass.

Luke was big and, you know, wasn't really no hip hop cracking out there.

[ Music ] There might be some of that influence.

And I was -- I was doing hip hop music then, too, so I when I got to -- when I got here, I got with Mike.

And I was seeing what they were doing out here, and I was like, okay.

I need to try to do something what they doing here is like, yeah.

This is mob.

Just the mob music, whatever.

Just -- I'm just going to incorporate it all, experiences.

Everything I got from here and then I'll just start going up to start giving 40 the beats.

Your signature sound, I call hyphy.

If you want to put a name hyphy on it is Rick Rock sound.

That's me.

That's my personal opinion.

You know what I'm saying.

Rick used to go crazy with -- Traxamillion was enhancing the sound.

Little John did a version of it, but that -- the heart of the Bay, that's what everybody was trying to be like and sound like was Rick Rock.

Rick Rock.

No doubt about it.

Rick Rock [inaudible].

[ Singing ] Hyphy wasn't about bass lines, per se.

It was more about the slap and pound in your face.

What makes a slap is the addition of the 808.

Those tempos make you forget about trying to act too cool.

And the 808s and the drums get you moving like this.

And then, from there, the energy, it spreads.

You know what I mean?

And everybody's moving.

I want to say when this hyphy thing was moving people noticed this.

The sound was different.

There are producers back that started off mob that actually have some big, big records.

Hyphy turned into a movement as far as a sound.

It's -- it's a movement that is embodied through the people of the Bay Area.

So I was talking to you earlier technically, and I said they give you the title of being the king of the hyphy movement.

You said you don't really, really want to be called the king.

Yeah.

I'm not the king.

I'm not the originator.

But I did help pave the way as far as the hyphy movement, as far as the soundtrack goes.

So you've got to understand the mentality and the artistry that goes into what Traxamillion really does.

And if it wasn't for Traxamillion, I can guarantee you there would be no hyphy movement.

The song Super Hyphy was made by Trax.

That all transitioned from Traxamillion.

That all came back from what Traxamillion had created off of a Triton keyboard.

And, just like that, hyphy was born to bass heavy, uptempo beat.

Now we need to work some lyrics to go on top of them.

There's so many people doing here.

I think that's one of the things.

Like, the Bay Area has no lack of talent.

Rick Rock was branding that sound.

And he definitely used just the maniast, hyphy-est sounds.

And to couple that with 40, it was just -- you know, it was waiting to happen.

This episode 1's going to slap.

Yeah, man [inaudible].

E-40 is the face of the Bay Area.

You know, love it or hate it, like, when it comes to, like, every, every era of Bay Area rap music, he's had the foot -- his foot on the gas.

I feel like E-40 had a major, major impact on the hyphy movement.

If you go back and listen to some of his music, even from the '90s, they have hyphy tones to it.

A lot of the lingo that he would say back then, a lot of the subject matters were regurgitated during the hyphy movement.

Yay Area, Fo Sheezy, slapping, Cheddar, Gouda, Fonzarelli, Feezy.

We are fa heezy Fo Sheezy.

E-40 to the Bay in terms of longevity and his, you know, one of the most prolific rap careers of all time.

That man, probably the most.

It's hard to think about another artist from any other region that has meant as much culturally and has stayed as true and has been such a -- like a fixture, a factor, a pillar, like a symbol really of that region consistently for as long.

Going up in the Bay Area, like, on cameo it was like Too Short, E-40.

And that's like -- those are like main staples, like just in our music.

But, like, later on, I got introduced to Mac Dre maybe like early 2000s when I was like a little kid and like, Mac Dre something [inaudible].

[ Music ] Like, it's crazy.

Like, certain people have this superstarism, right?

Like -- and you know what makes people really a superstar is when you see them and you feel good.

Right?

Like, that's what Dre had.

It's like you see him, you feel good.

Like, that superstar.

Mac Dre just brought it to a whole other level.

And anyone knows, you know, get stupid, go dumb, this dance, you know, da la la lots of people, you can name them all, it just -- it just brings you to that moment where you just want to just go hyphy, go dumb.

So, to me, Mac Dre is -- he was the originator of hyphy.

I was big on 40, and then came Mac Dre.

Then came -- then came the Furly Ghost, came the fun and the silliness and the playfulness and somebody who was just -- like, Dre came in the way, like, he was our little, like, Messiah, you know.

He was like a folklore.

You never saw Dre.

And, if you did, you're like one of the lucky few.

I first ran into Dre, like around -- like, say, like '88.

He was coming from a Boys Ranch on a furlough.

You know what I'm saying.

We all used to hang on ministry.

We formed a crew, which became the Romper Room.

And when Dre used to be in the studio, he used to be like, you know, very animated, you know.

Whatever the song was, that was his mood.

Later down the line when he did Feelin' Myself, it was like he was really in there feeling himself.

So I was like man because, when I first heard that, I was like, what is -- kind of catchy but it's different.

And, like I say, it's still played like today, like, you know, like it was made yesterday so.

He's the one who brought the hyphy, like, characterization.

Like, he is an embodiment of what it is to be hyphy.

He was somewhere else but, like, rather than a different dimension but you could just, like, hear it.

He's just like he's operating on a -- like a higher frequency than everyone.

That's why he was like -- that's why people could really, like, feel him.

Not only was the music, but he was like the spokesperson.

You're watching Treal TV hosted by Thizelle Washington.

What's up.

What's happening?

What is.

Welcome to your first episode of Treal TV.

I'm your host, Thizelle Washington.

He's the main reason why this whole -- the whole movement was moving.

He -- like I'm saying, he was the blueprint.

We didn't have no Snapchat.

We didn't have no IG.

We had DVDs.

And he was the one putting out the DVDs and giving the instructions on how to really do these dances and how to, like, be outside with it, be just like go dumb and, man.

I was -- if you watch Treal TV 1, that was on loop.

You know what I mean?

That's all I watched every day on everything I love.

Like Mac Dre was the character for the whole movement, period.

And it was dope to see somebody that had been through so much still have that ambition, still have that driving force to go towards his dreams.

He created this whole identity of go to a house, rent a house somewhere, build a bunch of studios, make a bunch of music, put all the music out.

That was the whole model.

It was love, man.

Dre was a good dude.

Dre gave a lot of people opportunities.

It was hard to get distribution.

And didn't nobody know how to put albums out.

Just like was just trying to figure out how will we get our music out?

How will we get our albums to the masses?

And Dre was an advocate for that.

He was giving people opportunity via his record label, Thizz Entertainment, the City Hall Distribution was just helping people get on there.

In history, we had the Def Death Rows.

We had the Bad Boys.

We had all of these rap labels.

That was Black labels, Black starter ideas.

And Dre just had those dreams.

He wanted Thizz to be big like that.

And, at that time, we had our eyes set on -- I think in like 2000, 2001.

This is before I met Dre, but cash money had just got like this $100 million deal.

And Dre was just like, Hey.

They gave them 100 million.

I know we could get at least 50.

You know, that was his whole thing.

It was just like, man.

Coming together with a label, we could -- you know, that was his dream.

He wanted to get a label to get everybody some money.

And everybody could be paid, and everybody could just one umbrella we all could just get some money and get some checks.

But he had those dreams, man.

[ Music ] When they told me, I just dropped the phone.

I was like, I couldn't believe it.

I just took them all to the airport.

It's impossible.

So I'm just -- I'm just like [inaudible] I don't know what to do.

Like, whether I, like, turn my phone off.

I couldn't even put on the radio.

I didn't want to hear Dre died.

I think I put on the oldies or something.

People don't understand, like I said, me and Frank, we was doing some [inaudible] with him.

And there was a major labels finally, finally paying attention.

And it meant a lot, man.

And this dude, he never really got to even hear himself blow up.

That's the saddest thing.

A lot of people get murdered, right, and rest in peace.

But they were already big.

Like, Dre was big.

But the people in charge, that's why I said people in charge are always wrong.

They didn't know yet.

They didn't believe it.

And when Dre got murdered, it changed the whole world.

It was like it made everyone turn it up.

Like, they took one of the greatest from us.

And it's like, for Dre, we gotta do it.

Dre always said, man, turn it up a notch.

Because I was on TV and I didn't you, none of you Bay Area rap cats there.

So turn it up a notch.

[ Music ] It felt like we lost our champion, and we didn't know what will happen next.

When Dre passed away and, like, the love was overwhelming.

Like, everybody just poured in, like, you know, because, like I say, Dre, you only had a happy experience with Dre.

And, like, he never had a bad life and nobody -- and we, like, all had to really, like, come together.

And we already, like, had Thizz Entertainment.

You know what I'm saying.

Still going.

But Thizz Nation was like, we keep the -- we like the heartbeat of Mac Dre.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, everybody pushes for Mac Dre.

This is a feeling.

Transform that into, you know, the label.

Thizz Nation is a family that we created after Dre's passing.

I call it a family.

Most would call it a record label.

But we lived out Dre's dream with it.

So the T is like it's a call.

You know what I'm saying?

You let them know.

You know what I'm saying.

[Inaudible] represents everything about Dre.

I feel as if Thizz Nation paved the way for the hyphy movement.

When I became their official photographer, Thizz was able to be pushed further than just our area of the West Coast, which I had been focused on this whole time.

I cared about our area, the Bay Area and the West Coast.

I always cared about this.

This is home for me.

So when I was able to get that opportunity with Julia Beverly to work for Ozone Magazine and be the West Coast editor and be able to place who I wanted, yeah.

Thizz Nation got a lot of shine.

So everybody came together, you know, and went.

Like I say, we just started building.

And then, at that point, Mistah Fab song took off, where they went to the radio.

You know what I'm saying.

It kind of blew up for us.

[ Music ] My love of hip hop developed at an early age.

I began writing at a young age, very young age, 11 to 12.

I was writing basically to kind of get out what it was that I was going through in life, what I have been dealing with, faced early.

So a lot of adversity, a lot of obstacles.

As a child, I became very challenging.

Certain hurdles that a lot of my friends didn't -- weren't able to leap over.

I utilized writing as a vehicle of expression, from small poems to poetry and expressing myself through literature as hip hop became one of the -- a highway of communication, you know, that as I began to read my journal to the world through music, through albums, through poems.

It helped ease the expectation of what I would expect someone else to say.

It helped ease the fear.

It helped ease the frustration.

[ Singing ] I'm a logophile, and a logophile is someone who has an obsession with words [inaudible] love to learn words.

I attribute that to my mother's dedication and parenting.

At 12 years old, she bought me a dictionary.

She unwrapped it.

I'm like, a dictionary.

Like, what's this?

And she wrote in it.

She said, I hope that this book helps you turn your dreams into a reality.

And I hope that you use this book to pursue your greatness.

And it's crazy, man, because now that I look back on it, she did a hell of a job.

She did a hell of a job of planting the seed.

You know what I mean?

She did a hell of a job, man.

Fab [inaudible] yearned for more, you know.

He's an artist.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, Fab is not just a rapper and like A as an artist.

And this is something that he had to grow.

Fab is an example of maturity.

The Bay Area was ignited.

Dre inspired us.

[Inaudible] and Fab kept the course going, and we couldn't be stopped.

[ Singing ] Ah, man, when it was cracking, everybody had a record sound here.

It was -- that's all you would -- it would just be banging, you know.

Those very few outsiders jumping up in there at that time, that everybody was putting records out.

And they were smacking, and it was uptempo.

It was going.

So everybody just be going, it'll be going crazy, be doing a lot of performances.

And all of us will be on the same stage.

A lot of times it's like it had the camaraderie.

You would constantly hear something new.

You would constantly get good vibes, new sounds, and you will see people having a great time.

[ Singing ] And there's different people who had a part in that, in that music and that sound.

There's a lot of different people, actually, so I wouldn't just pin it on one person.

A plethora of artists, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of artists that made music that all played a part in the sound of hyphy music.

When you hear your own song on the radio during the hyphy movement, you feel like you made it.

And a lot of people did make it.

106 KMEL.

A lot of people in hip hop and rap got their start right here on 106 KMEL.

So the DJs during the hyphy movement played a giant role in the movement.

The hyphy movement was like the mob movement with DJ support turned into the hyphy movement.

And without a DJ, bro, it wouldn't be that.

Sway's up at KMEL about to bring the wake up show back to KMEL.

And he's on Von's show, Big Von.

He's like, man.

We should open up the lines.

I think there's some people that can rap from the Bay Area.

So, like, the first night, Big Von and Sway opened up the rap battles.

At that moment is when the whole Bay Area started to fall in love with the movement because they actually knew the people that were talking on the radio.

And it just started taking off.

So when we think about the hyphy movement from a regional level, it was in which the artists were pushing back and speaking against being marginalized historically from the mainstream hip hop movement within itself.

And so hyphy, again, is a part of this local level of frustration from the young people but also this marginal frustration from hip hop artists being devalued in mainstream or commercial rap, Hyphy music is a reflection of the people.

So if you listen to a hyphy song, they might be talking about gangsta stuff that happens in the streets, but it's just a reflection of what they seen yesterday or what they seen earlier that day, right?

The music was the mirror to the streets and the people in the streets.

The hyphy sound was everywhere, on the radio, at house parties, but most importantly in the street, blasting through Alpine and Pioneer tweeters or subs.

It ain't a block you could hit and not hear a hit.

[ Tires squealing ] Being from the Bay Area in our blood.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, we're raised to do it.

Natural for us to drive.

It's just a natural habitat for us being at the sideshow.

[ Music ] Sideshow's where you bring your car out, and you show -- show what it do, you know what I mean?

Show people what you could do, what the car does, you know.

People are out here nowadays want to show skills.

We got muscle car clubs.

We got low riders.

But, most of all, the biggest to me in my eyes is everybody doing the donuts and the sideshow stuff.

[ Tires squealing ] I feel like it's just [inaudible] picture.

It's just like our form of a car show.

Like that's all it is, is a car show.

This is where, like, if you just got your new car, you -- it was pretty much, like, the club calls.

What are we about to do now.

Yeah.

That's where it started.

And the police know that.

So they tried to set parameters after a while.

Like, oh, we know the clubs are in it.

These about [inaudible].

And, for me, I was blessed enough to live at certain checkpoints.

So it's like 90th and May, High Street, certain little areas to go follow [inaudible] whatever the case may be.

I lived on High Street.

So you know, like, Orange, 2, go down, go down or you gonna catch it.

A crackdown is on these sideshows plaguing East Oakland.

Just last Sunday, an AC Transit bus and a big rig were set on fire.

Back in the day, it was [inaudible].

You know what I mean?

You can't hit people or hit the curb and jump on a curb.

Your whole car will get stomped out.

I don't know if you know that.

But your hold -- broken windows.

You might get chopped up and ripped out the car too.

You know what I mean?

If you don't talk about the gas stations in this documentary, you're missing the hyphy movement.

The gas station is where it all went down.

Like, cool clubs, cool street sideshows, all of that, the AM PMs, the Arcos, the Shell Stations, that's where it went down because that's where people would -- [inaudible] their cars and, you know, take off or come together.

That's -- that would be like -- that'd be the glue, you know.

That's the waiting room of the hyphy movement.

This activity going viral known as ghost riding the whip.

Go check out the picture I got, you know what I mean, with me on top of the whip, man, doin' my thing, on top of the Rover.

You might have seen it in the source.

This one I own.

Take a look, man.

That's how we're doing it in the Bay right now, so take off.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, we don't even go to the club.

We go into the -- we go in just after the club.

So the parking lot, that's what they used to say, parking lot.

It was the corner stores, too, that, if you know the corner store owner, they'll close at 2 AM.

But then they'll slide something through the gates at 2:30, you know, slide you some slightly some Heams [phonetic], some Hennessy, something like that.

And so that added to the flocking to the gas station or corner stores, you know.

It was a communal experience.

Hyphy was in the streets.

In our hearts too.

As it grew, it got translated in Hella wave.

It's how we carried ourselves, how we moved.

Most importantly for y'all not from here, we spoke.

We got our own language, our own slanguage that probably to decipher, if you's from a whole other country, you'd probably be like what the F [laughing].

[ Music ] Get this intersection of, like, a southern drawl from all the families that moved from the South up to the Port City to make the East Bay what it is and then like, sort of like California, like, almost like Southern California, like surf lingo.

So you get this hard R and a southern drawl saying these really, really sort of robust words that are fun to say because everything here is very playful.

And that's how you get, like, our very unique way of speaking.

[ Music ] Ya-l I mean, you feel me, like, you understand me.

Ya-l I mean.

It just depends how you want to say it and how extra you want to be with it.

But ya-l, like, for real, like yeah.

We just have our own -- we got banguage, you know what I'm saying?

We got our own thing, man.

Whether you talking about yogin, scraping, you talking cattin'.

Ye!

That's how you get somebody's attention, like, ye ye!

That's the call.

That's the -- that's -- if that's how like now, whenever you hit 'em with a ye, they don't look, that means they've -- not about their life.

Don't talk to that square.

I'm just going to say it to you now.

Don't tell nobody, though.

They say in the ancient Chinese history books that it was Keak Da Sneak [phonetic].

I came with the word, invented the word hyphy that we all, in turn, used to help, you know, turn this -- turn this region upside down.

You know what I'm saying?

So.

[ Music ] Super hyphy, it was [ Making sounds ] And you know what I mean.

And he would -- like, you just felt in the music.

Like, he was really in it.

I think he encapsulated like, you know, like an extreme level of unique.

[ Music ] From the sound of it, to the look of it, the fashion during the hyphy movement was wild.

The way people dressed at that time expressed the very essence of hyphy.

Be loud and, above all, unique.

[ Music ] Hyphy is loud, in your face.

We're here to show you that we exist.

We're trying to get the attention.

We're attention seekers.

We like to just flow.

We like to just put it out there.

It was a brutal counterculture in terms of counter to what else was happening within hip hop.

It wasn't your rap rap gangsta stuff.

It was more fun loving.

And, with that, the fashion reflected it.

The big glasses, race car jackets, people putting their own spin on things.

And clothes were so much bigger back then.

Man, White T shirt, blue jeans, and Nikes was just like the dress code.

You had a White t shirt.

You just -- if you had your little spot at the liquor store, you could get the pro club like three for dub.

And the real stunning shades when they first was like a big deal was like the big oversized glasses.

And if you could get, you know, some dope ones, you can get Gucci, get em ice style, whatever.

But, like, you know, some oversized lenses.

I mean, the visualness, like you got color braids, twisty dreads, so we could shake our hair so we can go down with the boys with the dreads.

It embodied the people.

White T's, blue jeans, and Nikes, almost anybody can wear that.

So you got people who got chains that might have cost them 20, $30,000.

But they got all the kit, the uniform, right?

You got scrapers, which are cars, that might cost a couple thousand dollars to buy, but then they wrap them with a NASCAR wrap.

They put big 24 inch rims on it.

You know what I mean?

And they put speaker system in the back, and now they got a Rolls Royce Rolls -- Royce on wheels for themselves.

You know what I mean?

It's about taking what you have and appreciating it.

Every aspect of hyphy was about expression.

The music, the cars, fashion and slang all reflected this.

But no element physically presented it that wasn't dance.

[ Music ] When it comes to the hyphy sound, first and foremost, like I said, it's an energy.

There's always the boom going down.

But in the Bay we don't dance to the downbeat.

We download dance to the upbeat.

So we're going dumb.

It's like you on the end.

[ Music ] You're listening to [inaudible].

Turf dancing is a dance of a -- a form of dance expression that was started in the hoods of Oakland, California.

It basically was a way to represent what block you were from.

So each block had they own separate type of way of dancing to represent which hood you came from.

Your turf is your neighborhood.

The '20s is a turf.

And within that turf, there's certain blocks.

And that block is essentially what you claim.

Maybe that's where your family owns property.

In like 2006 it was given an acronym for taking up room on the floor.

It was their way of showing what hood they represented.

And they would come to a party, feel the vibe, come in.

You had a hyphy music come on, and then everybody started dancing.

It's not even something you can activate.

It's like sometimes you just get there.

And I would stop dancing, lavish or feel or somebody come up to me, like, why, are you was tripping.

And I be like, I don't even know what I did.

Like, you know, I was just really zoned out.

Like, you know, I don't know what I did.

You've got to look over footage.

With our style and turf dancing and hyphy and all that comes from just natural energy.

And you can't predict where natural energy comes from.

[ Yelling ] You kind of didn't really think.

You we're just involved in the moment.

And you kind of knew what that entailed.

If you were at the party and the song came on and we all going dumb, then we all going dumb.

You know what I mean?

And it was everybody was just doing their thing, if you was in the car and then you just have to light and you decide to start yoking a little bit, just to kind of play with the people around you, then you doing that, so it was just, you know, it was a little bit of -- it's a mixture.

It's layers to it.

[ Music ] Going dumb is going all out stupid, man.

You feeling the music.

You feeling whatever you want, and you just -- you acting like a dumb ass, like a straight stupid.

Second dreads, jumping around, all that.

Man, it is -- it's addictive.

It's kind of like a bunch of people around you yawning.

And you know as soon as you see somebody else yawn, you've got to yawn yourself.

So it's kind of like that, right.

Like, man, you going goofy right now.

You getting juice.

You can fill it on the inside.

You, like, oh, man.

And you start -- you start doing -- then, once you start, it ain't no stopping.

Once you pop, you can't stop.

And then back in the day they was really popping pills, so that really influenced, like, that going dumb, like, you feel me?

That's why you couldn't stop nobody because you really couldn't tell nobody.

From the stories I've heard is all the OG rappers and stuff like that, the Bay Area, the raves were going down too.

Raves were the thing back here.

And so, for them, they would just go show up and do the same thing guys do now.

Go Mac on girls like that, pop a couple pills, sell some to some White people in suits over here and get down over there.

You know what I mean?

So they brought that whole -- they thought that was cool, the whole EDM and the rave stuff, that then they brought that into their music.

And then I think that's where the hard heaviness came from.

And then they threw 808 bass behind it and then it's -- yeah.

Just started getting down.

It was rolling, bro.

It really depends on what kind of pill you was on too.

Like, you know, my -- when you're going to be up all night, can't eat when you wake up type.

Back in the day, when they were at the club, most -- the candy shop.

It used to be the candy shop.

It used to be the candy shop.

Now, if you never went to the candy shop during the hyphy movement, you missed out; and you were safe.

But if you were going to the candy shop during the hyphy movement, man, while they was popping pills, man, and it was -- you just had to -- you just had to be ready, man, because anything can happen, bro, like anything.

Like, it was fun because we survived the hyphy movement.

But it was dangerous during the hyphy movement.

Like, going outside, you have to almost hope we made it back home.

Exactly.

[ Music ] It was a break from all like, ah.

We could go to the party and go dumb.

Like, you know what I'm saying?

I've got to think about my granny all in my ear.

I'm like, this, that my mom not here showing love me.

I don't care about -- I'm going to go dumb.

You know what I'm saying?

It was that -- just that brief moment of happiness for you in that instance.

The then, by the end of the night, they shooting in the air.

But, in that moment, you didn't care.

You knew it -- what the risk was, but it fun.

But you going to still go because you, like, it's working.

You know what I'm saying?

It's freedom.

It's like liberation.

Like, when you hear a song, you just -- and you feeling, like, you can't even -- like, you can't even describe that feeling.

All of it is about liberation.

It's about getting it out, you know, and celebrating and celebrating in a way that you don't feel inhibited in any way, you know.

And it's -- it's beautiful.

It was a moment of joy, frustration, and letting go [inaudible] around you.

It was powerful.

It all was, the music, the cars, the dancing, which is why, when we think about hyphy, we have to ask, why here?

Why now?

Family members who were impacted by the crack epidemic in the ''80s, again, now they are the young people who are in the streets having to deal and navigate those spaces.

And so they're the young people who began to get hyphy, if you will, this unbridled release of anger, frustration, but also joy.

And, again, it comes out of the -- the day-to-day social tensions on a local level.

We start to see bigger corporations take up space and moving their companies in particular neighborhoods and displacing other folks.

Stats don't lie.

What happened with the real estate market in America in 2008, something was going on.

I like to look at employment in East Oakland in 2004.

You know, Jerry Brown laying the foundation for what we see right now in downtown Oakland with this housing development of 20,000 new residents in downtown Oakland in the revitalization of the Fox Theater.

Well, something was going on.

And so, yeah.

Again, it doesn't happen in a vacuum.

With so much going on, man, we just losing friends.

People was getting killed.

People was dying.

It was a point in time when Oakland was on fire.

There's two murders a day, and that's not -- you've got to think about how small it is.

And like I'm telling you, it's like family oriented.

Like, we grew up together.

Like, we families.

But now because of all this, you live right here, live right here, play basketball, football together, you [inaudible] you may not know everybody dying.

Now we're dealing with the offsprings of what occurred.

Like, you know what I'm saying?

We're down in Bay Area.

Rapper Charles Kente Williams, better known as Keak Da Sneak, survived two separate shootings in 2017 alone.

In August of that year, he was shot while eight times while parked in his car in Richmond.

Keak is now wheelchair bound and headed to prison on a previous gun possession charge in Amador County.

It's almost like the harder you live and the closer you are to it, it's like flying closer to the Sun.

You know what I mean?

And he was so, like, in it that it might have almost got him, you know?

Like, we're lucky we still have him.

, -- of hip hop and rap music in the Bay Area are mourning the death of a popular Bay Area rapper known as the Jacka.

He was shot to death last night in Oakland.

Channel 2 reporter Alex Savidge is live now with a look at the growing memorial.

Good morning, Alex.

Tory, good morning to you.

Friends and fans of the Jacka are turning out this morning here at this sidewalk memorial across the street from us here, and we'll show it to you.

They're coming out to pay tribute to the well-known Bay Area rapper.

You can see people gathered here.

I couldn't figure out who would want to hurt Jack.

Still a question in my head today.

The Jacka was a hard R loss.

I celebrated my birthday every year with that guy.

And he -- he made me -- I didn't want to stop taking pictures.

Not him.

But I was over it.

When they took Jack, I was over it.

I was good.

I didn't want to go outside no more.

I couldn't trust.

I couldn't -- I couldn't handle it.

I'll go out there to the memorial and just take pictures, take pictures of all his fans mourning, watching them cry, stand inside of the storming rain.

And all I could think is why.

The war on drugs has impacted us in the ''90s and then still impacting us in the 2000s in such a way that there's still this very strong tension between police and community.

And that level of frustration and that level of attention is what really attracted people to the hyphy movement because it became a form of expression for young people to get hyphy as a way to scream at the rest of the world for their day-to-day social tension.

The overpolicing of Black and brown communities during that time period and Oakland falling under a federal monitor during that same time period where you have cops in West Oakland, literally a gang of cops, like, putting drugs on people, you know.

And this is, like, well-documented and how that informed people being rebellious.

People being like, well, you know what?

The cop won't -- it's not only NWA cops, but it's like, no.

Right now, they're doing stuff right now in the community.

So we going to rebel.

We're going to take over the streets.

We're going to commandeer the streets, and we don't care what they say.

We're not just partying, but we're partying in spite of what you're trying to force us to do.

It was a reaction to a very dismal time.

That's when I really started to understand, like, what Mac Dre was doing, you know.

I think I just sort of listened to the music before.

And it felt local, and it felt street and so we all loved it.

But it was really inviting.

It was really like everyone can be a part of this.

Think what happened during that time that I long for more of now is that everyone kind of let go, got really playful and really fun and kind of goofy.

And as Digs -- Digs says a lot of times, like, you know, the whole point of the -- of going dumb was, if you're going to call us dumb, we'll show you how beautiful dumb can be.

Now that you understand everything that went into this, we can finally talk about that moment, the moment when we felt like we couldn't be stopped.

Our moment.

[ Music ] Tell me When to Go was a collaboration between E-40, Keak Da Sneak, Little John on the beat.

I would say it's like a documentary in a song because it really embodies the hyphy movement.

The subject matters.

The uptemponess, the aggression, and also the lack of melody, not just the song but also the video, the visuals.

I will call it a masterpiece.

That was a very legendary day, to say the least.

Pretty much almost -- almost every Bay Area, major Bay Area rapper or, you know, the -- a lot of the important ones and our folks was there.

You know what I mean?

It was love.

[ Music ] The impact that Keak had on Tell me When to Go was major because he came with the course.

Tell me when to go.

Tell me when to go.

And it's a legendary hook.

You know what I'm saying?

As far as his verse, I mean, he really did him.

He did Keak Da Sneak to the fullest.

That's what I love about Keak Da Sneak.

He's original.

If you look at all the Bay Area hyphy pillars, the people who are the staples of the hyphy movement, they're original within themselves.

Have their own voice, their own styles.

If Tell Me When to Go came on, then everybody would know what to do when -- especially when, at the end of the song when he's instructing people on what hyphy looks like.

[ Singing ] You're going to see girls being shown, dreads being shaken.

Everything's he's instructing you to do, everybody going to be doing at the same exact time in unison.

I had never seen East Oakland picture with such gloss, you know?

Like, East Oakland in footage would always look like Soul Beat, or would always look like old school Blaxploitation films.

But to see it just glossy, in that -- on that same level that all the New York hip hop videos look like, I -- it made me prideful.

It did.

It's like this is a place where I eat burgers there all the time.

And to see it on that stage, it's like, damn.

Okay.

Maybe I could be on that stage one day.

And it was just like we felt it, and it was like the world can see us now because, at the end of the day, anybody who knows Bay Area, you know, how we move, it's like we always felt undermined and like our culture gets took.

Nobody glorifies it.

Nobody gives us our gist to someone.

You saw Tell Me When to Go on 106 apart, we got our just do.

We represent it.

We got our -- we just broke down in dumb here.

That made you feel it.

Like, we made it.

Like, it just touch your soul, So when this hyphy movement came out, it just so happened that Too Short was living in Atlanta at the time when we were all growing, doing it.

And Little John was out there.

Little John with E-40 and, like I said, as Little John produced Tell Me When to Go, but he also produced Blow the Whistle.

[ Music ] Blow the whistle, I remember verbatim because I was living in it.

So it's like, you can't -- I don't know.

You can't even express the energy you felt.

That's when the world start recognizing.

Like, all right.

Yeah.

I'm doing some over here.

Like, what is that going on over there?

Like, they turfed up?

And it was just a part of the culture at that time.

It just became a big thing that still shocks the world and the cultures today.

I will say the peak of the hyphy movement was 2006, the year 2006.

It's hard to recreate because it was an era.

It was a time, you know what I mean?

It's a time capsule.

The vibe, the vibe was amazing, you know, living without a care.

Wasn't no -- we put music to it, but it wasn't about music.

We was just rapping our lives, man.

That's what was going on.

This was us.

This is what it was.

It was a -- it was love.

It was -- it was everything.

It was all -- it was a microcosm of the hippies, you know, summer 2006.

Tell Me When to Go was our anthem and the closest we ever got to sharing hyphy with the world.

Regardless of whether the world understood hyphy or not, we did.

And it changed us forever.

There were good times and hard times and strange times.

But, in the end, we're glad we were there.

We was glad we was hyphy.

That was the era when we were the most unified.

That's when everybody was on one accord, riding.

We need this little moment of fun again because it was so grimy and gutter, and we celebrating each other.

We celebrating life.

Those brief moments of we hear you.

We made it.

[ Music ]